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Alexa Advertising Test

Is Alexa, Google Home or Apple Siri listening to your conversations? Some people are fearful of having a smart device with fears that "big brother" is listening.

Some people believe that internet Ads are showing up based on everyday conversations.

So we are going to try something. This week we are going to try an experiment to see if Alexa is listening.

We are going to pick a word/phrase and say it frequently. We'll use something that has nothing to do with regular conversations. We'll see if that influences Internet ads that we see.

We'll put the word on a Post-it Note near the Alexa as a reminder. This experiment should last for at least one day. We'll use the word in a sentence - just to make sure that Alexa knows it's something that we use frequently.

As a changeup, we'll use a different word in the car just to see if there's something unique with Amazon Alexa Echo Auto.

Sample Word Ideas

Some words to that we may consider - the actual phrase isn't listed so it doesn't impact our experient.

Spiderman Pin

Pencil Sharpener

Dog Food - useful if you don’t have a dog.

NFL Hall of Fame Museum

Winning at Blackjack

USB cables

Tap Shoes

Motorcycle Rain Cover

Next Week Status Update

I'll report next week on the status of our experiment. We go in this test with no expectations.

What do you think? Are you paranoid about using a smart device at home?

About this Blog Series

Amazon Alexa is a great tool to have. I spent some time learning about creating my own Alexa Skills. Enjoy this and all the skills that are available.

Champion Fortune

Late last year I migrated some of my fortune cookies DB to a a new Alexa Skill called Champion Fortune.

This isn't a typical Fortune Cookie Alexa Skill. The random fortune that Alexa will read is from an actual fortune cookie that I got.

Since 2004, I have collected fortune cookies from various Chinese restaurants. I only saved the best of the best and featured these on my website for many years. Now you can get a quick fortune cookie inspiration on Alexa!

Alexa: Real Audio Sounds

My Real Audio Sounds page has been online since 1997 - when this website launched. It was created as a test to see the streaming capabilities of Real Audio Software. Streaming media online was still new, as much of the home internet usage was still dial-up.

The page has about 155 short audio clips from various commercials to music clips that I had put together over the years. The page hasn't gotten much traffic as Real Audio is a bit of an old technology now. You still need to download Real Audio Codex to play the clip through Quicktime.

Now Alexa Enabled

Amazon Alexa seems to be the next hot streaming media technology, so I decided to port over the top twenty popular short clips to be played on Alexa.

New Alexa Skill

Last month I put together an Alexa Skill where you can have Jingle the Dog respond to random phrases. Simply put Jingle next to Alexa, and say the following commands:

Alexa, say something to jingle from jingle the dog

Alexa, make jingle bark from jingle the dog

Alexa, talk to jingle from jingle the dog

Try it Out!

If you have Jingle the Dog and Amazon Alexa, why not try out the 'Jingle the Dog' skill. If you know other phrases that Jingle add a comment to this post or to the original post and I'll be sure to add it to the Alexa Skill so everyone can enjoy!

Evernote Helper

Have you ever worked on a document and then an idea came up for something completely unrelated to what your working on?

Ya, it happens to everyone.

The problem is if you completely stop what you're doing - you'll loose focus on the task at hand.

EverNote Helper (Menu Item) can be a real life saver. When you encounter a distraction thought, such as "I should really check out that Tom Cruise - Tom Gun Music Video" you can just make a quick note without closing the program you're in. This is possible because EverNote Helper is a Macintosh/Windows system-wide utility.

I have found that EverNote helper is good way to remember things when you don't want to interupt your current task.

Screen Capture

As an added bonus, you can take a quick screenshot with your quick note. You don't need to take a full-screen shot - you can just take a picture of a selected area of the screen or any window.

Audio Recordings

Macintosh users can add a voice recording but I don't see any use for that. At my office it's pretty quiet - I don't think I would ever use this.

Some real world examples

Don't think it's something you need to use? Check out some real world tasks that have happen to me:

Thought of a cool gift idea while browsing Amazon? Take a screen shot and make a note.

See a cool graphic design on social media that you would like to duplicate? Take a screenshot of it and comment on why you like it.

Need to bring some supplies to work tomorrow? Take a note.

Found a bug but don't have time to file a report? Take a screenshot and jot down some notes.

Wouldn't it be great if.. Take a quick note.

On a call, need to jot a phone number or address?

Discovered a cool Alexa saying? Take a note.

At first I thought having another menu item didn't make any sense. However, I discovered that it makes perfect sense for just a quick note.

Once you remember the keyboard commands you'll be using this feature all the time.

Quick Cheat Sheet Guide.

One last Thought

Think about it - when was the last time your desktop sticky note had a screenshot?

Emoji in Evernote

EverNote is a great tool to organize everyday notes. You can put notes in Notebooks and tag them so you can easily find them later.

Did you know that EverNote Supports Emoji icons? It's a cool way to highlight notes or notebooks. Check out this example of the Done and Food Notebooks.

As you can see it's pretty easy to identify the use of those particular notebooks.

What are Emoji icons?

Emoji are a small digital image or icon used to express an idea, emotion, etc., in electronic communication.

Emoji in Evernote

You can use emoji within your documents. But did you know that you can use them in headers and in Notebook names?

This can make it easier for certain notes or notebooks to stand out. As in the above example, my 'Done' notebook is where I store completed Blog notes.

All Emoji are Not the Same

Androd Emoji and Apple Emoji are different, this is important to know if your using EverNote on different devices types.

Also keep in mind that Apple and Android don't have the same Emoji library. When Android encounter an Emoji that is not in their library, you'll get a box to indicate an incomplete emoji, If you keep a single OS platform, then this isn't a problem.

Emoji Technique

Using Emoji is a good way to make ordinary notes stand out. This is a great idea for those reference notes that you may need to use all the time.

Just remember to not throw an Emoji on synced Notebooks. (i.e. Notebooks that are being used by IFTTT, such as Twitter and IOS Photos.) If you add an Emoji, you're essentially changing the name and that may cause the sync to fail.

How to Scan to Evernote on a Mac

If you do a search around the internet for instructions on scanning documents directly to Evernote on a Macintosh, you'll find that many are out of date. You may think it's no longer possible. Well it still is...and it's very easy to set up.

Here's my simple instructions on how to capture scan images and put them directly into Evernote using Image Capture version 6.7 (OS X El Capitan)

Open Image Capture

Click on the "Show Details" button on the bottom right window

On the pull down menu next to the "Scan To: text, Select "Other..."

Select the 'Applications' Folder and then find 'Evernote'

Click 'Open'

You'll see the EverNote now appears in the pull down menu

Scan file items will appear as individual notes in Evernote. Immediately after the scan, you will have an opportunity to make some notes. This is a good time to comment on why you scan the item.

Evernote recommends to use Color as the "Kind:" and to scan at 72 dpi resolution. (See the example screenshot)

If you have Evernote Premium, the text in the scan items will be searchable. This includes photos. This means if you have a photo with an inspirational quote, you can search for it.

Note: This is backward compatible, which means that if you upgrade to Premium today, anything that you already have in Evernote account will be searchable. Make sure to give Evernote some time to scan and index all your document and photos after you upgrade.

Skitch and Evernote

If your looking for a productive Macintosh screen capture tool, I highly recommend checking at Skitch by Evernote. This is a free tool that works very well with your existing Evernote account. You don't need Evernote to use Skitch, but they work so well together, why wouldn't you?

About Skitch

Use an existing image or capture a new one, then add shapes, write on it, draw on it, annotate it any way you like, and save it to your Evernote account so that it is available everywhere Evernote is.

About Evernote

Evernote is a notes application designed to help you stay organized that goes far beyond what you'd typically think of as a notebook. You can add text, images, audio, scanned documents, files, and more to your notebook, synchronize everything across all of your devices in Evernote's beautiful, free apps, and then quickly find anything with powerful search that can even recognize text inside your files and images.

Your Screen Capture on Steroids

The key thing to remember is you can "quickly find anything with powerful search." This means that when you use Skitch and save the screenshot in your Evernote account, you can search for text that is in your screen shot.

That's the power of Evernote and Skitch.

Skitch has all the image annotation that you come to expect from a screen capture tool. You can add arrows, Text, Shapes, Highlights, predefine stamps, Pixelate, and crop images. You can easily export the image out of Skitch so that you can add it to a Jira issue.

Click on image for a larger version.

The good thing about Skitch is that it will create a notebook to store all the images, so the screenshots won't clutter up your default Evernote notebook. In addition, you can manage the notebook how you want, so if you don't want the files, simply delete them. You can tag the notes so that you can find them even easier.

I have plenty of space in my Upload Allowance.

Feature Requests

I would like to have the ability to record video as I can do with other applications, such as MonoSnap and Snap Z Pro X. Sometimes it's a lot easier to describe a bug when you see it in action.

Image/Shape Library - This would be a personal library of shapes and images that users could add to the screenshot. Knowing the image was issue happen in Firefox or Chrome could add a lot of value to the screen shot.